The emerging cloud alternative

Jon Collins, originally published on The Register

If there’s one thing about the current furore about Cloud Computing that really gets our goats, it’s to do with the amount of unnecessary confusion that’s being generated.

It’s unnecessary because, behind it all, there’s actually a number of quite good things happening. Sure, it’s a tricky area as it cuts across so many things – hosted services, virtualisation, service orientation, you name it. But ultimately, while the emerging options might be complex, they attempt to answer a very simple question: where do you want to run your stuff?

In this paper (pdf) we review the kinds of workloads in use in mainstream organisations, and consider the different hosting models and arrangements in the light of what is achievable and acceptable today.

So, if you’re struggling to get your head round what all the fuss is about, as we have been, we hope you find this report (pdf) useful. The goalposts are moving all the time of course, so we welcome your feedback.